Small gasoline-powered internal combustion engines, especially two-cycle engines, have a known problem of relatively high emissions of harmful combustion products, such as hydrocarbons, nitrogen oxide, and carbon monoxide. These gasses have been found to cause environmental problems. In an effort to reduce the amount of harmful exhaust gasses released from an engine, many small internal combustion engines are equipped with catalytic converter elements.
While many small internal combustion engines have included catalytic converter elements, many of the old designs have drawbacks. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,736,690 entitled “Muffler With Catalytic Converter” discloses a complicated design to form a muffler having an internal catalytic element. Because the muffler has a structurally complicated design, the muffler would be expensive to produce, thereby increasing the cost of the product using the combustion engine.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,164,066 entitled “Muffler For Internal Combustion Engine” features a muffler that contains, an internal catalytic element and a venturi at the outlet of the muffler. Similar to the design of U.S. Pat. No. 5,736,690, this patent describes a muffler that has many complex parts that form numerous distinct chambers inside the muffler as well as a complex structure to hold a catalytic element within the body of the muffler. The process to manufacture the components of this muffler will be time-consuming and the complexity of the muffler will increase the cost of the final product using the muffler.